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09/23/2010

Wiki-Lame

Oh! I wondered what this caper involving human rights groups petitioning Wikileaks to remove their mentioning of names from their unconsciounable Afghan war documents dump was really about.

When I caught sight of the surprising joint statement of the major human rights groups covered in major news media but not on their own websites, showing them pushing back at least a little bit against the arrogation of "transparency" power by the Wikileaks hactivists, I thought, hmm, was that made under duress? The statement seemed rather...lame.

Not only was the text a wan statement, it didn't have the usual main executives who sign these sorts of carefully-negotiated joint productions, which are usually marvels of compromise and cunning phraseology that could be read in different ways, and it didn't even have the staff people supposedly the greatest "stakeholders" in these issues -- those involved directly in Afghanistan, and therefore presumably concerned most about threats to civilians who worked for NATO who were exposed to harm by these documents.

Furthermore, the groups did nothing to publicize it and work it through their usual advocacy channels, which I see in my NGO circles and various meetings -- it was like a box checkoff, possibly under board member pressure, possibly in answer to some specific complaint from the Administration directed at specific staff members who used to work in past Democratic Administrations and can be relied on to cooperate -- or possibly somebody's resume-building project. I couldn't make sense of it, and posted it on my Facebook saying this was "too little too late" from these groups, and forgot to follow up on the mystery.

Much to my surprise, who should come up with the goods on this than my old frenemy and former roomie in the Sims Online and former colleague at the Alphaville Herald than Peter Ludlow (Urizenus Sklar). Uri dug around and pestered alady at the Wall Street Journal in a totally fake way, impersonating a naive midwestern professor who wasn't in journalism.

Of course, Uri is very much in journalism, only of the gonzo game sort, which still counts, and has several books, including one critiquing TSO and SL. And his picking up of this issue is no accident, comrade; for Uri, Julian Assange is like a Tizzers Foxchase who finally gets religion and saves mankind, or a Pixeleen Mitral who finally mans up and helps humanity, all the while keeping their 4chan street-cred. Uri has been waiting all his life for the word-salading script kiddies to mature and do something that benefits real-life radical politics instead of the Herald's post count.

The characters in the Wikileaks story were for all the world straight out of the Woodbury University drama -- there was even an Afghan vet griefer in WU, too (Scout Detritus). When I saw the RL picture of that soldier in the Wikileaks saga that was ambivalent about his LGBT life, I couldn't help blurting out the question of whether he was a fur-fag -- he looked like he could fit right in with Tizzy and the gang, whose lifestyle should be described not as homosexuality, but as continuous partial shared autoeroticism.

I don't think the Wall Street Journal reporter is the problem here at all, and I actually don't think there's anything so nefarious in an Amnesty staffer in Asia, concerned about the Afghan lives, or Americans who are recent grads and graduates of security internships, getting this statement out. If anything, they're saving the soul of their organizations. It's all good, because in fact those groups *should* be calling out Assuange LOUD AND CLEAR as to his Bolshevik carelessness with people's lives. That's the moral and the human rights thing to do.

Assuange, however, just like his sneaky devaluation of the Swedish misadventure which turned out to be really about his behaving like a dick and not about the Pentagon's nasty tricks, tried to make it seem as if this was "Pentagon-orchestrated". Uri has been eating it up...

I took him on hammer and tong on the Nation pages, because as per usual, he's celebrating the griefers crashing sims and making it seem like it's all "emergent behaviour" for him to write papers about.W

Comments

Wiki-Lame

Oh! I wondered what this caper involving human rights groups petitioning Wikileaks to remove their mentioning of names from their unconsciounable Afghan war documents dump was really about.

When I caught sight of the surprising joint statement of the major human rights groups covered in major news media but not on their own websites, showing them pushing back at least a little bit against the arrogation of "transparency" power by the Wikileaks hactivists, I thought, hmm, was that made under duress? The statement seemed rather...lame.

Not only was the text a wan statement, it didn't have the usual main executives who sign these sorts of carefully-negotiated joint productions, which are usually marvels of compromise and cunning phraseology that could be read in different ways, and it didn't even have the staff people supposedly the greatest "stakeholders" in these issues -- those involved directly in Afghanistan, and therefore presumably concerned most about threats to civilians who worked for NATO who were exposed to harm by these documents.

Furthermore, the groups did nothing to publicize it and work it through their usual advocacy channels, which I see in my NGO circles and various meetings -- it was like a box checkoff, possibly under board member pressure, possibly in answer to some specific complaint from the Administration directed at specific staff members who used to work in past Democratic Administrations and can be relied on to cooperate -- or possibly somebody's resume-building project. I couldn't make sense of it, and posted it on my Facebook saying this was "too little too late" from these groups, and forgot to follow up on the mystery.

Much to my surprise, who should come up with the goods on this than my old frenemy and former roomie in the Sims Online and former colleague at the Alphaville Herald than Peter Ludlow (Urizenus Sklar). Uri dug around and pestered alady at the Wall Street Journal in a totally fake way, impersonating a naive midwestern professor who wasn't in journalism.

Of course, Uri is very much in journalism, only of the gonzo game sort, which still counts, and has several books, including one critiquing TSO and SL. And his picking up of this issue is no accident, comrade; for Uri, Julian Assange is like a Tizzers Foxchase who finally gets religion and saves mankind, or a Pixeleen Mitral who finally mans up and helps humanity, all the while keeping their 4chan street-cred. Uri has been waiting all his life for the word-salading script kiddies to mature and do something that benefits real-life radical politics instead of the Herald's post count.

The characters in the Wikileaks story were for all the world straight out of the Woodbury University drama -- there was even an Afghan vet griefer in WU, too (Scout Detritus). When I saw the RL picture of that soldier in the Wikileaks saga that was ambivalent about his LGBT life, I couldn't help blurting out the question of whether he was a fur-fag -- he looked like he could fit right in with Tizzy and the gang, whose lifestyle should be described not as homosexuality, but as continuous partial shared autoeroticism.

I don't think the Wall Street Journal reporter is the problem here at all, and I actually don't think there's anything so nefarious in an Amnesty staffer in Asia, concerned about the Afghan lives, or Americans who are recent grads and graduates of security internships, getting this statement out. If anything, they're saving the soul of their organizations. It's all good, because in fact those groups *should* be calling out Assuange LOUD AND CLEAR as to his Bolshevik carelessness with people's lives. That's the moral and the human rights thing to do.

Assuange, however, just like his sneaky devaluation of the Swedish misadventure which turned out to be really about his behaving like a dick and not about the Pentagon's nasty tricks, tried to make it seem as if this was "Pentagon-orchestrated". Uri has been eating it up...

I took him on hammer and tong on the Nation pages, because as per usual, he's celebrating the griefers crashing sims and making it seem like it's all "emergent behaviour" for him to write papers about.W